Amazing Grace Adams
A Novel
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3.7 • 21 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
A Today Read With Jenna Book Club Pick
"I dare you not to fall wildly in love with Grace...It's a book about love, about grace, about even when we fall from those we love we can always find our way home...You will laugh on the first page and you will keep laughing until you're crying on the last page." ―Jenna Bush Hager, The Today Show's #ReadwithJenna
Bernadette, Eleanor Oliphant, Rosie, Ove . . . meet Amazing Grace Adams, the funny, touching, unforgettable story of an invisible everywoman pushed to the brink—who finally pushes back.
Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is forty-five, perimenopausal and stalled—the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian. And today she’s really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away.
Grace sets off across London, armed with a £200 cake, to win back her estranged teenage daughter on her sixteenth birthday. Because today is the day she’ll remind her daughter that no matter how far we fall, we can always get back up again. Because Grace Adams used to be amazing. Her husband thought so. Her daughter thought so. Even Grace thought so. But everyone seems to have forgotten. Grace is about to remind them . . . and, most important, remind herself.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The heroine of this irreverently funny and inspiring novel used to be an award-winning polymath with the world seemingly at her fingertips. But now, stuck in traffic on her 45th birthday, Grace Adams feels like a shadow of her once-awesome self. So she abandons her car and sets out to recover her former spirit—and regain the love, respect, and trust she once got from her family. Debut author Fran Littlewood excels at describing the often-deadening details that can bog us down in everyday life. She has a blast painting the full picture of what brought Grace to her breaking point through cringey and revealing flashbacks. This is a marvellous read that reminds us it’s never too late to become amazing once again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Littlewood debuts with an uneven perimenopause drama centered on the tempestuous relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter. Grace is 45 and recently separated from her husband, Ben. Once a gifted translator whose skills made her famous on television (the press called her a "ravishing redhead" and a "cunning linguist"), Grace feels adrift in her life, with diminishing professional prospects and a body that feels like it's "drying up from the inside out." She can't believe her daughter, 15-year-old Lotte, has grown from being the baby on her hip to a distant teenager and something of a TikTok sensation. When Grace finds a sexually suggestive note in the pocket of Lotte's blazer, her anxiety skyrockets. Then Grace learns her daughter has been skipping school. As Lotte pulls further away, Grace goes increasingly off-kilter, embarking on a frenzied, disastrous quest to bring Lotte a birthday cake. The novel employs a nonlinear timeline, with some chapters taking place in the early aughts, when Grace and Ben first met at a polyglot competition. Though the plot can feel undercooked, Littlewood easily captures the grief Grace feels at nearing the end of her reproductive years, and the mother-daughter relationship is similarly well drawn. It's a mixed bag, but Littlewood, like her protagonist, consistently finds the right words. (Sep.)
